


worthy, the blood that was shed

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [224]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, THE GREAT REUNION, but seen through Gwindor's judgmental (conflicted) eyes to keep things interesting, with flashbacks as always
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23747647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Oh, Soldier. Only the right kind of fight left in you.
Relationships: Gelmir & Gwindor, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë, Maedhros | Maitimo & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [224]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	worthy, the blood that was shed

In my travels, willing and unwilling, yoked and unyoked, I’ve learned that there are many people who think the sun a god.

I don’t hold with this myself. I’ve prayed—in the forest, hours and days ago, I prayed. But I won’t surrender to the notion of a father greater than his creatures.

I’ve seen enough of that.

I curse the sun, thus, under my breath. I fill my stomach with porridge, but no contentment. Belle’s done eating, too, and she looks as beaten as an old carpet. I imagine I’m worse, though I did sleep last night. While they were seeing to—to _him_ , I slept.

Feels like betrayal, if not of a god.

“I’m going back,” I say, and she doesn’t stop me. She makes to join me, and that’s when I shake my head. “You should rest. You deserve it.”

I thought I’d only get one. One brother. My mother put Gelmir’s squirming body in my arms—I was already a half-grown lad—and said,

_This one’s yours, Gwindor._

We had her, still, and our father. The fever hadn’t taken her yet; the drink hadn’t taken him. He wasn’t a cruel man, our father, just absent. She wasn’t a weak woman, our mother, just old before her time.

Still, I had hope for them. I was stubborn and foolish and had all of ten years to myself.

I remembered most, afterwards, how the baby curled against me— _calmed_.

Finrod leads Belle somewhere she can pillow her head, shut out the world. Belle—Estrela—

I’m supposed to call her _Estrela_ now, and I will, but it’s powerful hard to mend a thought.

I pause outside that tent where I slept, where he lay dying.

It’s powerful hard to mend a life.

What have I to say to the boy, if he ever wakes?

 _Nothing to say at present, you old fool_ , I tell myself. I draw aside the flap. I ask if I may enter. I feel the debt I owe to every man and woman here; those who rescued me, and those who rescued Maedhros. I owed no debts on the Mountain, though Gothmog would have said otherwise.

The past sends ice dripping down me. I shake it away.

Inside the tent, there is the smell of herbs, of boiled cloth, of blood. They bathed him in the night. Estrela had seen those wounds before, but no one else had. I wish I could protect him from each new set of eyes. He’s painfully shy of those scars, when he’s awake and choosing. I remember how he used to wash, turned away from me, like I’d think ill of a man who was branded and carved like that.

What had he done wrong? Not a thing. I’ll hear no ill of Russandol.

Fingon has been weeping. Who’s to begrudge him that? We’ve all joined him in it, and shall again. At present, he’s on his knees by Russandol’s side, and I’m heartened to see that the boy has a little color in his cheeks, beyond the dark blood bruising them.

I feel, at once, quite foolish. All my times with him in the barracks, staunching his blood and clenching his hands—those are secret now, and will remain so, at least as long as his eyes are closed.

So it is my lot, that nobody here knows whether I should be here at all.

Least of all myself, perhaps.

“I came to be of use,” I mutter. _A good piece of work, that, Gwindor! What use is a twisted shadow of a man, with two handless brothers to his name?_

(I yearn—I want to know what Russandol would say to me.

 _Come now, Soldier. There’s a good fellow. Don’t be so hard on yourself_.

He would say that with the corners of a tired grin forming, and I would bluster at him for the hypocritical nature that undercuts him like an axe taken to an unfortunate tree—

Then he would lie, very sweetly, telling me that he deserved a different fate than I did.)

“Gwindor, you are just what we need,” Fingolfin assures me, with the frank, open manner I’ve come to value in him. He’s uncle to Russandol, and as I have no nephews I can’t say for certain what it is he _feels_. Grief, doubtless. Guilt? No knowing.

“I?” Again, I am foolish.

“Fingon has not eaten. I alone am not enough guard for Maedhros, but perhaps if you sit here with me…”

“Father,” Fingon interrupts, biting at his lip.

The younger cousin. I know from the impossible mountain journey, how close were these two. But I was too fraught and splintered, then too strained, to watch Fingon with anything like peace. With anything like _understanding_. Now, I know my hints of fevered observations were right: I can see Russandol’s mannerisms in him, but they are not natural. They are—earned.

 _Of course_ , I think, all sympathy. _We want to be like him, don’t we? Young and old, new and old. He has that sort of irregular charm, bless him. Damn him._

I take Fingon's place beside him. There's not much to do but sponge his face with a clean rag, keeping mindful of the tender spots.

Lord, but he is a right heartbreak to look upon, with only one hand.

I was given one brother, then another, whom I’ve claimed without right so much as reason. Now, in an unexpected lurch of destiny, I’m thrust in the midst of _his_ brothers again.

They descend on the camp, and on his sickbed, like the clouds of a storm.

That’s Maglor, with his hair long and wild around his face. After him—oh, hang it all. There were three, I think, whose names began with harsh crow-cawing sounds. What were their _parents_ thinking? ( _Gwindor and Gelmir, you’re a matched set_.) Last, there is the scrawny slip of a youngest, whose hair is the same color as—his.

Only four have come here today: Maglor, the youngest, and two dark-haired boys who are trying to look like men.

Fingolfin asks me, low, to step back. For him (and for the boy on the ground), I do it. Brothers, after all, aren't enemies. Brothers should be allowed for.

Aren't I one to know that?

Standing aside, then, I keep my eyes hawk-sharp, trained on them. On them and his stillness, so different from their rush.

I see at once that they are not the selves we met when Russandol was dead.

What do _they_ say, these brothers?

 _He’s not dead, he’s not dead_ , the youngest chants, as if to reassure. _He’s not dead!_

 _Maitimo_ , gasps the sharp-faced one, and then he recoils, a soul climbing back into a body. He darts out of the tent altogether. The one with the square blunt face says,

 _Oh, God_.

Maglor falls to his knees and crawls.

“Oh, God, Maitimo, what have they done to you—” A sob, then another. These are followed by reed-like whinges, clinging to every ear in the place.

Clinging, too, are Maglor’s hands. They claw at his face, the picture of distress. I’ve another picture in mind. I grind my teeth in my mouth.

 _Ask for Maglor_. _He will help you, I think._

“Maitimo, come back, don’t—why doesn’t he _wake_? Have you drugged him? Have you—how _dare_ you—why does he lie here so still, God, God I’m so sorry—so sorry—”

_Why can’t you ask for Maglor yourself?_

I said that.

I think I begin to understand now.

Guilt? Yes, in a thousand selfish spades.

_He died for you_ , I want to cry out. Then I remember that Russandol is still breathing.

They are wolves. They are boys.

I find it so easy to hate them that I am frightened of myself, my hatred. It was the same with him, I must remember. It is the same ugly tendency and truth:

 _I hated_ _him at first_ —

If I am not to hate them, must I understand them? How am I to look at Maglor, nearest brother, whom he trusted— _ask for Maglor, he will help you—_

How am I to trust?

“His harms have been very great,” Fingolfin says, crouching, his hands linked together between his knees. “Maglor, I have no comfort to offer you but my assurance that Fingon is doing everything he can. We are not doctors, but we have assisted. We washed him and dressed his wounds. Maedhros is safe, here.”

“Safe? God above, man, they cut off his hand!”

The other two brothers, one dark, one red, have clenched _their_ hands. They are weeping. I honored Fingon’s weeping. Why not theirs?

Maybe—maybe because all I can see is Russandol, weeping in the dark when he thought I could not hear him. Standing brave and tall when nobody asked him to. Beaten and bruised, his head driven down into the water, then dragged up in a monster’s grip.

He loved these boys; I do not doubt it. After torment, he found it in himself to love the brats. He defended Belle (Estrela). He seemed to think of me as a friend.

Even those whom he had no reason to love, he saved. He needled me until I sought a truce with Lem.

Peace, tenderness. But also—a vow. _You can help me destroy him._

What is he, and what lived inside those eyes, that heart? If they are storm-clouds, he is a tempest all his own, yet I know nothing of his history. I am watching a world that is not mine to share.

From thence comes the hatred.

From the knowledge of Russandol, and the ignorance of Maedhros. Of Maitimo.

Time passes. There is no fight, as I half-expected there to be.

 _Celegorm says you might as well wrap his corpse! Is that_ safe _, uncle? Is that what safety is to you?_

Aye. Maglor’s all talk. I feel the need to retch.

Fingolfin’s voice beats back the blur. “No.”

It’s then I realize that I lost something, too, in this half-hour. My senses, perhaps.

Yes, I’ve lost time while Maglor bargained.

 _For what?_ I’d be inclined to ask him, but I’m sure he hasn’t noticed me. I don’t count as one of them. One of his kin, one of his enemies. Yet if I was man enough to throw a challenge, I would say,

 _For what?_ _For the lost hand? Thank whatever god_ you _pray to that you didn’t see it done._

“We are his _brothers_ ,” Maglor snaps, as if that means the world.

 _Precious little good it did him_ , I think, with the cruelty that rises like hot water in my throat, my eyes.

“And he’ll die if you move him now, _damn_ you,” Fingon interjects. Has Fingon been silent all this time, or have I been more scattered than I thought?

No…I recollect. He left after I entered, as his father ordered. Then he returned, running, but as Maglor is no fighter, there is no battle but this one.

Maglor spits, “You think you can, just because you—you—”

“Yes. Me.” Fingon’s jaw thrusts forward. I half expect his fist to follow, but his father is between him and Russandol’s useless brother.

(Useless. My arm and shoulder, my screams. The distance—the blood.

 _God._ I swore I’d never pray again, after that.)

The quarrel, I later learn, was whether Russandol—Maedhros—Maitimo—should be moved over the bridge to Mithrim. Away from us, that is. Away from those who made sure we’d a body to quarrel over. My vision flooded white when I first heard this fool plan, but I kept my head down, listening.

Not my place. Not my right.

(All my reason.)

 _Oh, Soldier,_ whispers another voice from the past. A voice I’d soon forget. _Only the right kind of fight left in you._

Maglor was defeated, and Russandol remains. I learn that Fingon said no. More importantly, I suspect, Fingolfin said no. He’s the leader here, which amounts to something—even though I saw Fingon in the hell-hole cave, and know what a leader _he_ is.

I met Fingon on the other side of the monster’s blind eye. That’s enough. Someday we’ll all forgive him, for cutting off the hand.

I do now. I must.

Because there I am ( _there you are, Gwindor, with your brother and your useless heart_ —) years and miles ago. There I am, with the knife in someone else’s grip, the blinded eyes unreachable, the tongueless voice inescapable.

When you cannot save the life, the guilt of its loss is yours to hold.

If you have two hands to hold it in, the guilt is heavier, so as to fill them both.


End file.
